Looking Back at Kalamazoo 2012

This was a really good Congress. It was pretty laid back and things seem to go pretty smoothly. I met lots of new history of medicine folks that I hope to keep in touch with (and barely got to chat with a certain geek I saw a lot of, sniff). I had great luck in picking sessions. Just about every session I went to either had interesting info for my research or gave me ideas for blog posts (even the ones I picked just for general information). I’ll highlight only some of the presentations here.

The tone was set just right with the first session Thursday morning on “Medieval Environments I: Food Shortage and Subsistence Crises in Medieval Europe” sponsored by ENFORMA (Environmental History Network for the Middle Ages). All three of these papers were really good. Kathy Pearson’s “After the ‘Fall': Feeding Rome in the Early Middle Ages” discussed the changes in Rome over the 5-7th century or so. She reminded us how drastically Rome shrank over the late antique/early medieval period. Their food demands shrank likewise and could usually be met by the hinterland until or unless pilgrims swelled the population of the city. Pearson reminded us that the Roman estate system had broken down before the seventh century; its trade network and food shipments even from Sicily much less the wider Mediterranean were lost by or before the seventh century. Tim Newfield’s “Shortages and Population Trends in Carolingian Europe, ca. 750-950″ was very interesting and closest to my own work. He presented a lot of hard data that I didn’t try to write down but will eagerly wait for publication (and I’ve already looked up his PhD thesis – maybe a future full post). For now I’ll only say that there were fairly regular food shortages throughout this period. Philip Slavin’s Alternative Consumption: Fodder and Fodder Resources in Late Medieval English Economy, ca. 1250-1450 reminded us how livestock compete with humans for food sources and what allocations of fodder can tell us about animal use. I think ENFORMA will be a group that I may want to follow-up on.

For my second session I hoped to learn more about the Goths but two of the presenters didn’t show up. Deanna Forsman’s Becoming Barbarian: An Examination of Stilicho in Fifth-Century Latin was an interesting exercise in ethnic identity and Roman citizenship delivered with a lot of energy!

The last session of Thursday was Medieval Environments III: Exploiting and Managing Animal Resources”. The two papers that really stuck with me areCristina Arrigoni-Martelli’s The Prince, the Park, and the Prey: Hunting in and around Milan in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century and Kevin Ian Malloy’s Forgotten Landscape: An Environmental History Examination of Medieval Parks in Scotland. What really struck me was the degree of management of the landscape into virtual open range deer parks to the point in Milan of rearranging the agricultural landscape to create range tracks for hunting. While I accept that it happened and that it explains the animal diversity (or lack of it) in Europe, it’s still hard for me to imagine. Driving back from Kalamazoo to southern Illinois I passed five deer road kills in one day!

Thursday evening I went to the “Burn after Reading: Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval studies” that I guess was supposed to talk about adjusting to some of the realities facing ‘medieval studies’ and the humanities as a whole in the current funding and reshaping of the university landscapes. A few of the 13 speakers had constructive (if not entirely popular) suggestions. Several of the mini-manifestos have appeared on blogs since linked by the Medieval History Geek. It was interesting to watch as an outsider to the field. I loved it when another independent scholar asked the panel what they do for fun and not one of them said anything medieval related. I think she asked it because they were all being so dismal. Angst is the word I would use to describe the session. Of course they all backtracked and eventually said they loved their field, couldn’t imagine doing anything else etc. I believe she said she asked it because she wanted to know where/how they got their enthusiasm refreshed. They said ‘coming to Kzoo’! :-) Perhaps part of the problem they had being put on the spot was perhaps that I find it can be hard for a researcher to separate what is work and what is fun. Field trips are fun, even if work related. I imagine going to London or Paris to look at manuscripts could be fun! It also makes me think of the growth in Tolkien related studies at Kzoo, which for a medievalist is a fun modern text. The same for discussions of medievalisms in modern film, tv, books etc. Likewise, lots of science folks read science fiction or watch science fiction tv/movies for fun. Alas, no one said they blog for fun.

Back to regular sessions, the intriguing mix of science and medieval studies continued all day Friday. I started the morning with The Health and Lifestyle of Medieval Populations: A Bio-anthropological Perspective. Another case where people dropped out of the session but they scheduled four so it was still good. The two presenters came from the Global History of Health Project at Ohio State. This is a massive bioanthropology study of people around the world from prehistory to the 19th century. (They are still looking for collaborators for Europe, especially south of the Alps for all time periods.) Richard Steckel’s Medieval Stature: The Human Skeletal Record of Life and Living, AD 800-1500 had some really interesting data on the long-term shifts of human height (related to nutrition and life stress) for about a thousand years. (If I recall correctly his data extended beyond 800-1500). I wish I had a print out of some of the charts showing the rolling changes in height across the medieval period and the differences in gender. For example in some periods, men got shorter and women got taller or the opposite. Other periods, there was a general decline in height and the shortest of all was the industrial period (about 17-19th century). Our medieval ancestors were taller on average than the first factory workers. Kimberly Williams’ Growing Old in Medieval Europe: Osteoarthritic Ankles, Knees, and Toes (and Other Joints) covered arthritic changes observed and how they also changed over time and place. She also discussed the osteological paradox which states that bones that show signs of arthritis (or malnutrition) are the healthier individuals because they survived the stress. People of weaker constitutions would die before these signs of adaption appeared in the skeleton.

Next up where the two sessions I organized. I really couldn’t have been happier with how they turned out. The first session on Health and Healing in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland was packed; we had people sitting on the floor. I was up first and I think my talk went ok (and I’ve tried out parts of it on you all over the last year here at Heavenfield and on Contagions, so no rehashing that!). Mara Tesorieri’s Regional Patterns of Health in Early Ireland: Distributions of Non-specific Stress Indicators covered some of the same malnutrition topics I did but from a bioarchaeological perspective. She had some interesting data contrasting Ireland with Britain and areas within Ireland. In general, there were more signs of stress in Ireland and it was not distributed evenly. She briefly discussed some early observations of stress indicators vs. political stability. I’ll be looking forward to hearing more about her project as it progresses. Julia Baolotina’s The Experience and Practice of Medicine by the Laity in Anglo-Saxon England discussed what evidence there is for lay medicine and how much medical care monasteries provided for their surrounding territory, which seems to have varied quite a bit based on excavated cemeteries. Silas Mallery’s By France, or By Spain? Possible Mediterranean Origins of Irish Holy Well Veneration covered a wide-ranging comparison between early holy wells in the Mediterranean, Roman Britain and their later appearance in Ireland, their use in medicine, and he also discussed the antiquity of general water offerings.

In the second session Medical Texts of the Early Medieval Mediterranean our second speaker withdrew the week of the Congress, but the remaining two more than made up for the space. Jayna Brett’s Animal-Derived Medicines in the Early Medieval Pharmacy discussed a 4-5th century Italian text and its influence. She gave us lots of examples of the types of animal parts used and what they were used for. The early medieval pharmacist must have been quite the odd fellow picking around butchered and exotic animals for their medicinal bits. I mean really, who collects condor eyes for a future salve? As I commented then, it seemed more dangerous to acquire some of these medicinal bits from some wild and aggressive animals than the condition the medicine was used to treat. Glenn Cooper’s Book-Learning and Medicine in Medieval Byzantium: Theory and Practice of the Alexiad of Anna Comnena brought us the fascinating story of a woman author who wrote her father’s biography using a metaphorical system based on the human body and used her own book-learned medical knowledge to describe his condition and criticize his medical care. Confined to a monastery for a rebellion against her brother she gathered a “salon” of learned men around her that became her intellectual legacy. I want to thank everyone who came to both sessions and the lively discussion that followed both sessions was great! After such a busy day speaking and presiding, this introvert needed to recharge with a quiet night, a nice dinner and returning to the hotel early.

I had intended Saturday to be a mainly Anglo-Saxon day but I made some last-minute changes and it worked out really well. The first session was Bede: Friends and Enemies I that I got to late, so I missed most of the first speaker. Patrick McBrine’s Old Acquaintances: The Poetry of Bede’s Vita Cuthberti brought a welcome look at the influences of antique poets on Bede’s verse Life of Cuthbert. It is always nice to see even snippets of that life, which still lacks an English translation!! The third speaker was a no-show, sigh. The session wrapped up with Peter Darby’s Bede and the Image Question: Enemies and Friends in Constantinople. Darby argued that Bede was kept up to date on the latest Iconoclast controversy in Rome by his researcher Nothhelm and that Bede took part in the debate by producing his De Templo as a rebuttal to the Iconoclasts using the decoration of Soloman’s temple. Within De Templo, Bede comments that the commandment not to make craven images of things in heaven or earth did not apply to icons and church decorations because Soloman’s temple had many carved images of things both from heaven (cherebim) and on earth. It’s interesting that Bede sends De Templo to Albinus of Canterbury to be copied for distribution. Darby argued that Bede felt so strongly about this issue because of how important the icons/paintings that Benedict Biscop brought to Wearmouth and Jarrow from Rome were to the community. Recall that Bede spends a lot of time in the History of the Abbots describing the art work acquired by Benedict.

I switched from my planned Bede sessions to Early Medieval Europe II and it really paid off. It opened with Louis Schwartz’s What Rome Owes to the Lombards: Devotion to Saint Michael in Early Medieval Italy and the Riddle of Castel Sant’ Angelo. This is one of those plague legends that I think I will devote a separate post to, so hang on for more on this one. Erica Buchberger’s Gothic Identity in Spain before and after the Arab Conquest brought more examples of the fluidity of ethnic identity, both self-identity and reported identity both others. Helen Foxhall Forbes’ Suicides and the Damned in Anglo-Saxon England discussed what limited information and attitudes toward suicide. Acknowlegment of a suicide is rare in the records because it meant burial in unconsecrated ground. As Forbes said, a lot of people die ‘falling’ off buildings. The suicides implied in the record are also all from falling from great heights. She was also representing The Impact of Diasporas on the Making of England project at the University of Leicester, a multidisciplinary project involving history, archeology, genetics, linguistics, etc. Check it out!

For my last regular session, I thought I would try to learn something about Herbals so I went to the Herbs and Healing, from the Ancient Medieterranean through the Medieval West: Papers in Honor of John Riddle II. I’m afraid I didn’t get too much out of the first two papers because I’m really not a manuscript person. Unfortunately they were more interested in reconstructing textual transmission than with the content of the manuscript. However, the last talk was Wendy Turner’s Mental Incompetency as a Foundation for Suit in Medieval English Land Disputes had some good data that covered up through late medieval England. I’ll have to keep an eye out for her work for post-Black Death guardianships etc. Handling issues like care for children and the disabled is part of disaster response (even if it’s not called that) that can go on for years after the event.

My Congress ended with a pretty typical routine: one last stroll through the book exhibits, pick up dinner, and then go to the Pseudo-Society Saturday evening. The book exhibits were disappointing this year. Fewer publishers and book sellers came, and those that came brought fewer books to exhibit and fewer copies of what they did exhibit. I rarely go to Sunday morning sessions with such a long drive home. So after a quick run through the big book sale Sunday morning, I hit the road early and got home in time watch Sherlock Sunday evening. Overall, a very good Congress with lots to think about and a rejuvenated feeling that are exciting things going on that I might be able to contribute to!

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4 comments on “Looking Back at Kalamazoo 2012”

I’m sorry I never really got the chance to talk to you. I’m trying to remember exactly why. My guess is I either had to leave quickly for another session or the bathroom whenever we were in sessions together.

Thanks for posting this! Very interesting to see your take on the “Burn After Reading” discussion – esp. collective response to the question from the medieval-enthusaist in the audience. I think you’re right – what was behind her question was some sense of “how do you refresh your joy for the material/field?” I think you hit the nail on the head: for academics and scholars, it’s not easy to disentangle “work” from “fun” as we inherently take pleasure in our objects/fields of study. Having to step back and articulate how that enthusiasm takes shape is something we’re not often asked to do.

I think for some active researchers ‘free time’ is not so easy to define. Its all a self-negotiation between doing something for the project and other activities. Besides active researchers and teachers are rarely ‘off’.